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Old World, freshly baked

A St. Petersburg company prospers by giving traditional European breadmaking some modern twists.

By Chris Sherman
Published February 22, 2006

	[Times photos: Cherie Diez]
	Harty Gerhard holds a sampling of the rustic breads turned out by the St. Petersburg bakery of the company he founded, Euro-Bake.
	The Spitzweck roll at Euro-Bake, a company started by German baker, Harty Gerhard.

ST. PETERSBURG -- At first the word puzzled the Gerhards, although they'd been in the bread business for years.

"We didn't know what 'artisan' was,'' Mike Gerhard remembers. "To us it was just good bread like we had in Europe.''

But hardly common in the United States when Harty Gerhard, Mike's father, arrived in Miami in 1993. Bread and dinner rolls with texture in the crust and a bite of flavor in the softer centers were scarce. "The bread was like softballs," Mike Gerhard said.

He found that big hotels welcomed his offer to deliver to their door bread parbaked in Germany and frozen for trans-Atlantic shipment.

He eventually moved to Safety Harbor and then to St. Petersburg, expanding his territory and his line of imported breads. Today a generation of reborn bread lovers from Hawaii to Costa Rica breaks off crusty pieces of round, rustic boules, long baguettes and chewy ciabattas that came from the ovens and freezers in the clump of odd buildings of Euro-Bake in St. Petersburg.

How many loaves? Millions, possibly billions. Watching rack after rack of hard rolls work their way through an automated oven, Mike Gerhard and his brother-in-law Andy Zeissner do the calculations on a cell phone: 430,000. Per day.

That's just the spitzweck rolls, with their slightly pointed ends and an open crease down the center. It's Euro-Bake's signature product and a common sight in bread baskets around the country. There are other rolls, with dill, rosemary, Gouda, raisins or muesli, plus country French breads, Tuscan sandwich bread, rough-looking sourdough and so on. All are baked 80 percent through, and the customer does the final baking to a crisp brown edge.

Sales and production grow by double digits every year.

Euro-Bake is a story of two successful immigrants, one a family of German entrepreneurs and the other the crunchy texture and punchy taste of Old World bread. The tale involves two significant developments. It started with the global traffic in fresh foods, from Italian sorbetto to New Zealand lamb, and winds up in the revival of the industrial zone of downtown St. Petersburg.

The Gerhards are not artisans in black baker caps handcrafting breads all night long to sell in their corner bakery. But Euro-Bake's spotless, new $7-million plant hums 24 hours, six days a week, and employs 100 workers in warm jackets and pale blue hair nets instead of trendy caps.

The head baker is Uwe Kehlenbeck, who trained in Germany but has enough experience not to flinch if a customer requests bread with jalapenos in it.

His key assistants have names such as Sancassiano, Eberhardt, Siemens and Rheon, all massive precision machines from around the breadmaking world, including an intricate Japanese device that mimics the slow manual kneading of baker's hands.

And an American helper named Rubbermaid - tough 32-gallon tubs - rolls on dollies throughout the plant in various colors: white for most doughs, yellow for sourdough, red for flavored and seeded doughs, and gray for trash.

This is where the basics of breadmaking begin just as they would in a corner bakery, the long rising process that is crucial to good bread and as important as actual baking. "It's all about process and detail," says Harty Gerhard.

First a starter (brought from Germany) is grown in stainless steel bowls, then added to a yeasty sponge in one of the plastic tubs. It will take hours to double, then be mixed with a batter and more yeast to form the actual dough. Machines shape the dough and pause to let it slowly rise or "proof'' to final form. Then it moves through ovens and flash freezers. Though it may all be moved and coordinated mechanically, some doughs take 16 to 20 hours before 15 minutes of baking to become breads.

The Gerhards' story is longer. Harty's brother first imported parbaked breads from Germany to Puerto Rico. "They really love bread," Harty Gerhard says. "Here you figure 1.3 to 1.5 rolls per person for a banquet; there it's 3 to 4.''

The brother suggested expanding the business to Florida, and Harty Gerhard, looking wistfully at palm trees in the dead of a Karlstadt winter, agreed. For the first few years he picked up bread from freezer space near the Miami docks and drove his old Mercury station wagon to Orlando hotels.

Eventually he stored bread in a big chest by the pool behind his house in Safety Harbor, and then found refrigerated space in St. Petersburg. Four years ago the Gerhards shifted from importing to baking the bread here in partnership with their big German baker. Ultimately the space wasn't big enough, and they toyed with building a new plant in Manatee County, but St. Petersburg officials offered some financial support and helped them acquire a neighboring block.

Over the complex now fly the flags of the United States, Florida and Germany, an interconnected world of bread.

-- Chris Sherman can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com.

Bread box wisdom

-- Good bread bought in a store or bakery will keep in the freezer.

-- Fine bread tastes good even cold; heat makes anything better.

-- Go light or skip butter to get the real taste of bread. Try unsalted butter.

-- Euro-Bake, on 19th Street S in St. Petersburg, does not have a retail store. The public may order bread, rolls or pastries in wholesale quantities in advance and pick them up at the plant. Most boxes contain 15 pounds of frozen, parbaked goods. The number of pieces varies depending on the product from a dozen loaves of bread to more than a hundred rolls. For a catalog see www.eurobake.com or call (727)-823-1113.

Many local retail bakeries make European breads fresh. Two that specialize in German baked goods are:

-- Cafe Mozart, 6754 Fourth St. N, St. Petersburg; (727) 521-1333.

-- German Baker Boy, 5958 Corey Ave., St. Pete Beach; (727) 360-8953.

[Last modified February 22, 2006, 07:10:43]